The White Gryphon

There was a pause, and then, :All right! I miss you!:

Then Kechara was gone from his mind.

King Shalaman straightened up and repeated himself. “You tell me where.”

Skandranon met the King’s eyes and understood. It was The Haighlei Way. He opened his beak to say, “Follow me,” then stopped himself. No. That was not what a King would say to another on his own ground.

Skandranon took a deep breath, refolded his wings, and summoned his last bit of endurance. “Run beside me, King Shalaman, as you run in your great lion hunts, and I will guide you. But we must make haste.”

Amberdrake knew, as he flexed his grip on the silk rope and the bar, that his words and acting had failed him. The novelty of his speech was gone. Bluff or not, his status as just one man would catch up with him. Despite what history would show, for better or worse, now was the time for him to throw himself on fate’s mercy.

He flung the coil of rope at the table, then pulled, twisting his body sideways with all the strength he could muster.

There was a splash and a scrape, and a moment later, a resounding thunk as the scrying-bowl struck the floor. Amberdrake continued his twist and brought the iron bar down on the bowl to shatter it into a dozen pieces.

That was it, Drake—your one move. He came to rest on one knee, looking up at the two. But at that moment, he heard—well, it wasn’t precisely a voice in his mind, and he didn’t quite hear it—

It was a sense of presence; not words, just feelings, and the aura of boundless cheer and playfulness overlaid with weariness, but bolstered by endless curiosity.

Kechara? he thought, hard, trying to project the image of herself back to her.

Feeling of assent. Before he could respond, she sent him a new sensation; intensified curiosity. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was asking, either. “What are you doing?” was as clear in feelings as in words.

He was breathless with relief—dizzy with the feeling that he was, at last, no longer alone.

But how had she figured out how to reach him? She was using his strongest Gift, that of Empathy, to speak with him without Mindspeech! Where had she gotten that idea?

Fear rose screaming inside him. He didn’t have any way to explain what he was doing—not without words!

Do what Skandranon would do, Drake—do without words—without focused intellect—let her feel it —let her in!

He had never, ever, lowered his barriers completely with anyone but Winterhart, for an Empath always has to fear being lost in another’s emotions—but how could he ever fear little Kechara? There wasn’t an unkind bone in her body! He dropped every barrier he had to her, and let her come directly into his mind, just as the light began to creep back and the Eclipse to pass off.

He felt his body slip away from him—felt his back and arms go limp—

One of the two men at the table slid noiselessly out of his chair and seized something from a bookcase against the wall. As the man turned, he came fully into the lamplight, making what was in his hand gruesomely plain.

Amberdrake’s stomach lurched, and he sensed Kechara recoiling as well, mimicking his reaction, though she couldn’t have any idea what they were both looking at.

It was a wand, crudely fashioned from bone. It could have been made of animal bone, but somehow Amberdrake knew that it wasn’t. No, this was not just any bone, but a human bone, the large bone from the thigh. From one of the earlier victims? Probably. Probably the first. We‘II never know who, I suspect. Somehow that just made it worse.

This grisly relic must be the mage’s primary power-focus, the place where he was storing all the power stolen from those Hadanelith had murdered for him, and all the people he had murdered on his own.

Amberdrake stared at it, his gorge rising and bile collecting at the back of his throat. He couldn’t move; he couldn’t even think. He could only stare at the nauseating thing, as the mage took in his shock and paralysis, and smiled, slightly. The light strengthened, and the mage moved the wand in front of him, holding it between his palms, and his smile deepened. The other man leaned back in his chair and chuckled. That was when Amberdrake